Atlantida

At the foot of the valley of the Mia, at the place where the jackal

had cried the night Saint-Avit told me he had killed Morhange, another

jackal, or perhaps the same one, howled again.

Immediately I had a feeling that this night would see the

irremediable fulfilled.

We were seated that evening, as before, on the poor veranda improvised

outside our dining-room. The floor was of plaster, the balustrade of

twisted branches; four posts supported a thatched roof.

I have already said that from the veranda one could look far out over

the desert. As he finished speaking, Saint-Avit rose and stood leaning

his elbows on the railing. I followed him.

"And then...." I said.

He looked at me.

"And then what? Surely you know what all the newspapers told--how, in

the country of the Awellimiden, I was found dying of hunger and thirst

by an expedition under the command of Captain Aymard, and taken to

Timbuctoo. I was delirious for a month afterward. I have never known

what I may have said during those spells of burning fever. You may be

sure the officers of the Timbuctoo Club did not feel it incumbent upon

them to tell me. When I told them of my adventures, as they are

related in the report of the Morhange--Saint-Avit Expedition, I could

see well enough from the cold politeness with which they received my

explanations, that the official version which I gave them differed at

certain points from the fragments which had escaped me in my delirium.

"They did not press the matter. It remains understood that Captain

Morhange died from a sunstroke and that I buried him on the border of

the Tarhit watercourse, three marches from Timissao. Everybody can

detect that there are things missing in my story. Doubtless they guess

at some mysterious drama. But proofs are another matter. Because of

the impossibility of collecting them, they prefer to smother what

could only become a silly scandal. But now you know all the details as

well as I."

"And--she?" I asked timidly.

He smiled triumphantly. It was triumph at having led me to think no

longer of Morhange, or of his crime, the triumph of feeling that he

had succeeded in imbuing me with his own madness.

"Yes," he said. "She! For six years I have learned nothing more about

her. But I see her, I talk with her. I am thinking now how I shall

reenter her presence. I shall throw myself at her feet and say simply,

'Forgive me. I rebelled against your law. I did not know. But now I

know; and you see that, like Lieutenant Ghiberti, I have come back.' "'Family, honor, country,' said old Le Mesge, 'you will forget all for

her.' Old Le Mesge is a stupid man, but he speaks from experience. He

knows, he who has seen broken before Antinea the wills of the fifty

ghosts in the red marble hall.